Czech minority in the Banat

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The Czech minority in the Banat is a small ethnic minority living mainly in Romania , but to a lesser extent in Serbia .

Signposts in the Banat with partly Czech place names

history

In the early 19th century people from different parts of the Danube Monarchy settled in Romania. About 9000 emigrants came from Bohemia , especially from Central Bohemia, who settled in the southern Banat and founded several villages there. One reason for this was the timber industry , similar to the Banat Swabians . Privileges such as exemption from taxes and years of military service served as an incentive to settle here. Sometimes people were lured in by private entrepreneurs with false promises of land and work. This was especially true for the first wave of settlement from 1824 to 1825, which was organized by a Hungarian timber contractor named János Magyarly. After the clearing work was completed, he disappeared without keeping his promises to the workers. Many settlers then joined the army. The second, larger wave from 1827 to 1828 was mainly organized militarily, its goal was the settlement of the border area in the Banat Mountains at the Iron Gate for strategic military reasons ( military farming ). Sources of income were mainly timber and agriculture, but later also hard coal mining .

Several Czech settlements arose on the Romanian side of the Danube , six of which are still predominantly or exclusively inhabited by Czechs:

Banat Czechs also settled in the city of Orşova ( Oršava in Czech ). Other villages such as Svatá Alžběta (Elisabethfeld), which was first founded in 1823, or Frauvízn (German: Frauenwiese, Roman Poiana Muierii) were abandoned. One reason for this were problems with the water supply, which is difficult to this day due to the strategically favorable location of some villages up on the hills. On the Serbian side, not far from the border with Romania, Češko Selo (founded in 1837) should be mentioned.

When the Banat fell under Hungarian rule in 1861, there was a third, smaller wave of immigration, in the course of which, however, no new villages were founded: Few immigrants were distributed among the previously non-Czech settled villages of Clopodia in the Caraș-Severin district (1862), Peregul Mare in Arad County (1863) and Scãiuș in Arad County (1863-1865), in which only a few Czechs live today. Apart from these organized waves of immigration, there were also individuals, mainly craftsmen, who moved mainly to larger cities and were quickly assimilated.

In contrast, in the small villages, due to the isolation in the mountainous landscape, there was little contact with the Romanian-speaking environment, and the small language islands were largely cut off from the rest of the Czech-speaking area . In this way, the linguistic and cultural life from the 19th century was largely preserved. The language of the Banat Czechs is therefore characterized by old-fashioned forms and some Romanian loanwords.

Another group of emigrants came from the Pilsen - Bohemian Forest area in 1828 . These were not Czechs, but German Bohemians , who founded the villages of Gărâna (Wolfsberg), Brebu Nou (Weidenthal), Poiana (Wolfswiese) and Lindenfeld a little north of the settlement area of ​​the Banat Czechs .

Todays situation

Today the Czech villages have to contend with a severe decline in population . This is caused (after a first wave of emigration in 1947-49) mainly due to the emigration of young people to the Czech Republic since the borders were opened after the fall of communism in 1990. A total of around 3,938 Czechs lived in the Romanian Banat in 2002 (2002 census) and 1,648 Czechs in Vojvodina (mostly in the Serbian Banat) (2001 census) In 2002, no more residents were registered in Lindenfeld.

At the turn of the millennium, tourism (mainly from the Czech Republic) as a new source of income began to be developed alongside agriculture . Overall, contacts with the Czech Republic were intensified, and in 2007 a weekly bus service from Svatá Helena to Prague was put into operation.

The Czech ethnic group is recognized as an ethnic minority in Romania and as such has a seat in the Camera Deputa Depilor , the lower house of the Romanian parliament.

Czech population shares by commune

Romania (2002 census)

The distribution of Czechs in Romania (2002 census)

Serbia

Well-known Banat Czechs

map

  • Club českých turistů: Turistická Mapa Banát, M 1: 100,000 . Map and guide. 1st edition. Freytag & Berndt, Prague 2001, ISBN 80-85999-88-9 (Czech, Romanian, English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gero Fischer: Czechs in the Romanian Banat. Wiener Slavistisches Jahrbuch, Edition 49 (2003), pp. 203-218.
  2. ↑ Manfred Klaube: The four German-Bohemian communities Wolfsberg, Weidenthal, Lidenfeld and Alt-Sadov in the Romanian Banat. 1972.
  3. ↑ Balthasar Waitz : Ghost villages in the Banat. 126 fictitious localities registered nationwide. In: General German newspaper for Romania from January 27, 2016